DESCRIPTION The overall goal of this project is to measure and quantitatively characterize the response of neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC) to acoustic stimuli. The specific aims of this project are to characterize the non-linear, spectro- temporal and adaptive behaviors of single units in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus using custom designed stimuli for this purpose. The inferior colliculus is a central way-station in the auditory system which plays a major role in the processing of complex sounds, such as speech. Characterizing these behaviors will allow one to better understand and predict how the mammalian IC processes complex sounds and ultimately to contribute a better understanding of the pathologies in speech recognition and language acquisition.